about snfd

Kim and Lauren are the mother-daughter team behind Something New For Dinner. Kim develops the recipes, shoots the photography and writes the posts and weekly emails to our subscribers. Lauren is the Internet marketing guru who developed and maintains our website, leads our marketing efforts, manages our social media and keeps us on track in general.

Together we have created a website devoted to providing flavorful, nutritious meals to share with family and friends. We believe communal meals are the cornerstone for nurturing healthy bodies, promoting communication and developing strong relationships. Who doesn’t enjoy a great meal with those you love?

We invite you to subscribe to our weekly email where we highlight our latest recipes and focus on seasonal topics, nutritious ingredients, cooking techniques and meal plans. Please let us know what you think by commenting and rating our recipes or writing in with any questions you have.

advertisment

browse snfd

share

Two intense days of food styling and photography

When I first started Something New For Dinner I naively thought the success of my website would directly correlate to the quality of my recipes. WRONG! Great recipes are essential, but I have learned that the greatest recipe doesn't matter if it isn't accompanied by beautiful food photography. I can't tell you how many times I have developed a great recipe but failed to get a good shot and had to remake and shoot the recipe again. So among the many new skills I have been working on, food styling and photography are at the top of my list.

[content_upgrade cu_id="15680"]Get our free cookbook: 15 Recipes That Will Make You Look Like A Star[content_upgrade_button]CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD NOW[/content_upgrade_button][/content_upgrade]

A weekend with Todd and Diane of White on Rice Couple

I recently had the great fortune to learn from two of the top professionals in food photography: Todd Porter and Diane Cu. Their resume includes all of the top food brands, food magazines, and food lifestyle brands. You name it, they have shot it. They have a beautiful food blog, White On Rice Couple, and an exquisite cookbook Bountiful: Recipes Inspired By Our Garden, which I highly recommend.

On top of all that they run food styling and photography classes out of their amazing Costa Mesa studio that is stocked to the ceiling with the most incredible assortment of food styling equipment. I felt like a kid in a candy shop!

Todd & Diane graciously fed us breakfast, lunch and dinner, plus snacks, hand-crafted coffee, boozy pops (more on these delicious treats later) and a creative cocktail or two. These refreshments were needed to keep us fueled for all the challenging work we were doing.

They took us through food-styling and photography from A to Z, and were extraordinarily generous with their knowledge. For the final test Diane styled 10 stations and required that we shoot each station in 40 seconds. Collectively, all the students' jaws dropped at this 40-second requirement, but Diane calmly assured us we could do it. And she was right, we all shot beautiful photographs during this test.

Here are some of my shots from the weekend:

So if you look back to my early point and shoot photos, you can see progress is being made. In fact, many of my early shots are kind of embarrassing! Here is a picture of a really great caesar salad I shot when I first started Something New For Dinner. As you can see, the photograph fails to entice.

Click here to see what Kalyn of Kayln's Kitchen, my new food-blogging friend, had to say about the two day session with Todd Porter and Diane Cu.

Hi Renee,
The class was a wonderful learning experience for me. I thought there was no way I could shoot in 40 seconds, 10 times in a row and come up with anything worthwhile. I wouldn’t recommend it as a practice, but as an exercise it was a great challenge and motivation to think on your feet. BTW, your photographs on Flavors of Light are beautiful.

Hi Kim, I’d feel the same! That principle is a good exercise that I’m going to try myself. What fun to get to hang out with Todd and Diane and other bloggers and shoot food Thanks for sharing, and thank you for your kind compliment.